From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2004-11-16T04:10:50+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby extension best practices

leon breedt wrote:
> hi,
> 
> i am about to create an extension for a third party API (API is pretty
> consistent), was wondering what the best practices are.
> 
> are there tools for generating the glue for methods on classes i
> create to wrap the various abstractions?
> 
> is there something like Pyrex for Ruby? (google didn't really come up
> with anything conclusive).
> 
> what is the most "modern" way of creating extensions without making
> too much work for myself such that it is difficult to maintain?
> 
> when is it a good idea to use Ruby/DL and when not?

Check out SWIG. It can do most of the work for you, generating wrappers 
for the 3rd party API.

Another possibility, is cgen (on RAA) which I wrote to provide a ruby 
interface to the ruby C API. It was intended for code generation rather 
than wrapping, so it might be a better choice if you are generating an 
extension from scratch. I have used it with an existing library, though.